


mashed bananas

by hotcuppa



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Heart-to-Heart, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 13:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30123819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotcuppa/pseuds/hotcuppa
Summary: ”He feels guilty about freaking out on them, but he couldn’t help it. Something about that picture just… Made Bucky remember. Made Bucky start grieving all over again. Made him miss the life they could’ve had if Bucky hadn’t enlisted and if Steve hadn’t tried to be some fucking martyr.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60





	mashed bananas

**Author's Note:**

> normalize tagging things with canon divergence when you don’t remember all the specific details and don’t wanna get called out for your fic not fitting canon details if you accidentally messed up 😢

It’s been a good day. 

It’s the first day off they’ve had in a while, and Bucky took advantage of it. He slept in, spent extra time in the gym, sat outside just because he could. It’s been a long while since he’s been able to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, and even during the brief interludes in Wakanda, it wasn’t the same. Nothing is quite the same as being back in Brooklyn again. Being home again. 

He and Steve moved back to Brooklyn as quickly as they could, and it’s the best decision they’ve made yet. Their old apartment building was torn down a long time ago, but the city still feels the same, still feels like home even though the streets look nothing like they used to and everything is, somehow, a lot more fucked up than they were 1942, the last time Bucky was properly living in Brooklyn. The buildings are a lot taller, too. 

As Bucky makes his way back up to the apartment, his shoulders feel a lot lighter than they have in a long while. Having the time to get out today is therapeutic. And knowing they don’t have anywhere to be today, and indefinitely, is a liberating feeling. Bucky’s ready to retire—and he would, if he thought Steve would be up for it. 

But Steve’s too much of a goddamn good person to retire while he’s still willing and able. Even though things are a lot better than they used to be, and even though the Avengers could handle it without them, Steve won’t retire. He’s always been too goddamn altruistic, and it’s gotten him in a hell of a lot of trouble in the past, because if dumb was dirt, Steve fucking Rogers could cover at least an acre. 

Nevertheless, the momentary peace—although fleeting—is something Bucky’s more than willing to take advantage of. He takes the steps two at a time as he makes his way up, and he practically skips to their door once he’s on their floor. He can hear the light chatter of voices floating from the living room as he pushes the door open, and although he was kind of hoping Steve would be willing to take a nap under the pretense of watching a movie, this is good too. Steve and Bucky never had a lot of mutual friends before, on account of the fact that Steve was a goddamn spitfire that pissed everybody off and was often too sick to go out anyway, so Bucky’s enjoyed having these new friends. 

He rounds the corner to the living room happily, smile already on his face, and brightens when he sees Tony, Bruce, and Natasha sitting on the couch, looking at something and laughing while Steve sits on the other side of the couch and just smiles at them. 

“Hey, Buck,” Steve greets immediately, causing all 3 others to turn and look at him, greeting him in kind. 

Bucky nods, raising a hand. “Good to see all of you.” He walks to the other corner of the couch where Steve is, and leans down to give him a quick hello kiss before looking back over to the other four. “What are they looking at? And what’s so funny about it?” 

Steve snorts, “Nat was nosy and found one of our old photo albums. I’m pretty sure they’re laughing at me.” He rolls his eyes and looks up at Bucky, and in the exact same second, Tony leans back enough for Bucky to see the album in Natasha’s lap. 

The album is one of the only things from the past that they managed to salvage, and not all of the photos in it are original. It’s opened to a page with a photo of Steve on one side and a newspaper clipping about wartime Captain America on the other, and they’re all looking at the picture of Steve. Bucky recognizes it instantly.

It’s Steve the last Christmas before Bucky went to England. They were at Bucky’s family’s house, and his mother had gotten his father a camera for Christmas. His father had gone around snapping photos of everything, and he’d gotten this one of Steve. Steve was standing in the kitchen with Bucky and Winnie, though neither of them were in the shot, and he was laughing because Winnie had just launched a spoonful of mashed bananas (that they were _supposed to_ _be_ making gold nugget cake with) at Bucky’s face and hit him square in the nose, splattering it all over Bucky’s cheeks and forehead. 

There’s a photo of that too somewhere, possibly in a photo album in one of Bucky’s nieces’ or nephews’ houses, or in the houses of their children, since all of his siblings are dead now. 

But that picture of Steve has always been one of Bucky’s favorites, because of how… _carefree_ Steve seemed. He was laughing without going into an asthma attack, wasn’t spending Christmas in bed getting over influenza or pneumonia, and he looked beautiful. Bucky feels himself prickling as he watches their friends make fun of Steve’s appearance, and before he knows what he’s doing, he’s walking over to them and snatching the photo album right out of Natasha’s lap. 

Nobody speaks for a second, the room filled with tension thick as molasses, before Tony leans back and appraises him. “Something wrong there, Robo-Cop?” 

Bucky clutches the album tightly as he glares at Tony—though he honestly much prefers Robo-Cop to Manchurian Candidate—and then turns to look at Steve. Steve, who looks so confused, but is also standing and coming to Bucky’s side, ready to defend him even though he doesn’t know what Bucky’s pissed off about.

“Shut up, Tony,” Steve dismisses quickly, before resting a gentle hand on the crook of Bucky’s elbow. Even when Bucky was still The Winter Soldier, still had pieces of the assassin clinging to his psyche, Steve was never afraid to touch him. “What’s wrong, Buck?”

For a second, Bucky doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to explain the insurmountable rage that filled his veins when he saw them laughing at Steve, laughing at the Steve that Bucky loved so desperately. It was a weird combination of protectiveness and possessiveness, and Bucky didn’t know how to explain that to a group of people who had never loved Steve this much before. To a group of people who had never gone through going to war thinking you’d never see the love of your life again, and then when you did see him, he looked so completely different from what you remembered, and you never got the chance to mourn the person you loved because he wasn’t really even gone, until he _was,_ and _you_ were, and suddenly it’s 70 years later and both of you are almost unrecognizable from the two boys who said goodbye that morning in 1942. 

It isn’t that Bucky doesn’t love Steve, or that he wishes Steve was still small and skinny and sick. He loves Steve no matter what he looks like. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an adjustment, and it doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss the way things used to be. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t kind of wish he could go back to how things were. He doesn’t love Steve any less, he just misses the life he had. He doesn’t think that makes him a bad person, or a bad boyfriend. 

What he ends up saying is, “My dad took that picture.” And everybody just blinks at him, barely moving a muscle, until he adds on, “It was Christmas 1941. He was laughing because my mom threw bananas at my face.”

Natasha is the first one to react, sitting up straight and nodding carefully. “We understand,” she says gently, words measured. “We’re sorry we invaded your privacy.” She’s careful, so careful. 

Bucky wants to scream that it’s not about _privacy,_ that he’s never cared about hiding his relationship with Steve, not now and not in the 30s when it could get them arrested or worse. But he doesn’t know how to tell them what it _is_ about, and he doesn’t particularly feel like he owes anybody an explanation anyway. 

“Don’t you ever get sick of making him the butt of your jokes?” Bucky snaps, and it’s really only part of why he’s upset, but it feels good when he says it. It’s something he’s been thinking about for a long time. Something he’s never said, because Steve’s never seemed to have an issue with it. “Making fun of him for not understanding your stupid references. Calling him Capsicle and making fun of him for being older, or for being stuck in the ice. And now you’re making fun of him for what he looked like before? Like he had some kind of fucking control over it?”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Tony says, almost mockingly, and Bucky feels the red boil over and fog his eyes. “Relax, there, Terminator. Cap knows we love him, don’t you, Cap? We’re best friends or whatever.”

“I’m his best friend,” Bucky snaps. “Steve would’ve hated you in the 30s, Stark. He never did like bullies.”

Everything kind of happens at once, then. Tony tries to defend himself, standing up off the couch to do so, but Natasha is quick to follow and placates him before he can say much. Bruce stands too and starts speaking to Bucky and trying to calm him down, to apologize as Nat had, but Bucky can’t really hear him because Steve is talking, too. 

Steve is tugging on his arm and saying _come on, Buck, come talk to me, let’s go take a breather, come on, let’s just go calm down,_ and Bucky kind of resents it. He’s supposed to be past all of this now. He’s not supposed to need help controlling his temper anymore—especially not with Steve. He used to be the one having to talk Steve down from a back alley fight and now Steve is having to talk to him like a child to keep him from punching Tony Stark in the face over what, some pictures? He should be embarrassed. 

They end up in their bedroom, door closed and locked behind them. Bucky doesn’t face Steve immediately, just sits down on the bed and flips back open to that picture from Christmas. He takes it out of the plastic covering and then picks up a picture frame from his nightstand. He removes the picture in it, a fairly recent picture of himself and Steve at a formal event, the first one they’d been to in the modern world, and puts Steve’s old picture in its place. 

Steve just watches him do it without saying anything. He won’t be silent for long, of course. Steve’s never been good at biting his tongue, and Bucky knows he’s going to have a lot to say about Bucky challenging his friends like that. For some fucking reason, Steve really likes Tony, no matter how many jokes Tony makes at his expense or how many times Tony reminds him that his boyfriend is responsible for the death of his parents as if Bucky had any semblance of control over himself at the time. 

He feels guilty about freaking out on them, but he couldn’t help it. Something about that picture just… Made Bucky remember. Made Bucky start grieving all over again. Made him miss the life they could’ve had if Bucky hadn’t enlisted and if Steve hadn’t tried to be some fucking martyr. 

Eventually Steve moves to sit next to him on the bed, so Bucky tries to stall by reaching back to put the picture frame back on his nightstand. It works for a second, but then Steve slides his palm onto Bucky’s knee, and Bucky has to fight back the insistent burn of tears. 

“So,” Steve starts, with his stupid gentle voice and stupid patience, “do you want to talk about what just happened?” 

Bucky tries to play stupid. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I stood up for you, just like I always have.”

Steve snorts. “I don’t need you to stand up for me anymore, Buck.” And leave it to Steve to drive the goddamn stake right through his heart all over again. As if Bucky doesn’t know just how much things have changed. “Besides, I think there’s more to it. You didn’t almost hit Tony just because you were worried he’d hurt my feelings.”

He doesn’t bother to remind Steve that he’s hit people over less. 

Instead, he just shrugs, chin to his chest as he stares at his lap. He twists his thumbs around each other and it only serves to irritate him more, because one of his thumbs is _metal,_ and that’s the change that affects his daily life most often. 

“Talk to me, Bucky. What’s going on?”

Goddamn it. Fuck Steve and his stupid soft voice. 

Bucky’s been weak for Steve since before he knew his multiplication tables, and it only grew into something more intense and _romantic_ the summer after Bucky turned 16 and they went to the lake for Steve’s 15th/The Fourth of July and he saw Steve come out in that small little bathing suit. He hasn’t been able to resist him since. Even when Steve was getting black eyes and bloody noses and making Bucky so mad he could spit nails, Bucky loved him more than anything in the world. 

He looks over his shoulder, back at that picture, and he thinks of how _happy_ they were. Even though they had to keep it secret, they were so deliriously happy. They couldn’t kiss or hold hands in front of Bucky’s parents, not even that Christmas, but they still managed to go over and have a good time. And get photographic evidence. 

He remembers every Dodgers game they went to. He remembers going to the beach, going to markets, going to see cheap movies, going to the arcade to play pinball, making dinner together in their tiny kitchen, and racing toy cars down the alley behind Bucky’s house. Of course he also remembers Steve being sick, he remembers Sarah dying, and he remembers when the war started in ‘39 and everything seemed doomed. But the bad didn’t seem that bad, so long as he and Steve were together. 

Finally, he chances a look up at Steve, who looks so concerned and so soft, who clearly loves Bucky just as much as Bucky loves him, and he finds himself having to look back down at his lap again. 

“Fuck them for laughing at you,” Bucky snaps, and though the words are spoken to his thighs, Steve hears them anyway. “That’s… I fell in love with you when you looked like that. Not that I don’t love you regardless of what you look like, because I do, you _know_ how much I love you, but. That’s my Stevie.”

Steve’s hand tightens around his thigh, and he nudges their shoulders together. “I know what you mean. And I get it, I do. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m all that crazy about the new look, either. Once the novelty wore off, it definitely took some getting used to.”

Bucky snorts a little bit, but it isn’t quite a laugh. He’s pretty sure he couldn’t smile right now even if he wanted to. Even if Steve actively tried to make him smile, something he was so good at, Bucky’s not sure he could manage. 

He wonders if Steve realizes it’s beyond just the body, beyond the appearances. He wonders if Steve has any idea just how often Bucky lives with the grief he feels about their old life. 

“Don’t you ever miss us?” He blurts out, because it’s all he can think about. 

That throws Steve for a loop, apparently. Because his hand leaves Bucky’s thigh, and when Bucky looks up, he can practically see the cogs turning in Steve’s brain. 

“No?” Steve responds, though it sounds more like a question than an answer. “What do you mean, Buck? I’m right here, you’re right here. How could I miss us when we’re together?”

_He doesn’t get it._

Bucky isn’t sure why he thought that maybe Steve would understand. This— It’s what Steve wanted. Steve signed up for Erskine’s program, he enlisted a million times before that anyway, he reveled in being Captain America, and even though he never intended to come to the future he’s definitely taken it in stride. Bucky didn’t make those same choices. Bucky didn’t choose to fall from the train, didn’t choose to be brainwashed by HYDRA, didn’t choose to become The Winter Soldier and live this long. He barely even chose to become an Avenger, and that had more to do with Steve than anything else. 

He’d like to think he’s with the Avengers now because he’s a good person beneath the brainwashing, and because it’s the right thing to do. But he knows that he’s only doing it for Steve. His own selfish reasons. Of course he cares about the world and saving the people in it, he’s just never really considered himself qualified to be the one doing it. Joining the Army and becoming an Avenger are two entirely different things. Bucky could learn to shoot a gun. 

So all in all, he shouldn’t be surprised that Steve doesn’t get it. He isn’t that surprised. Just a little disappointed. 

“We used to put couch cushions on the floor in the living room, and cover them with old sheets to make a fort,” Bucky explains, in the best way he knows how. “We went to Coney Island and I made you ride the _Cyclone_ until you threw up. We went to Rockaway Beach and then rode home in a freezer truck because we blew our train money on hotdogs. We lived together in that rickety old apartment, and the cabinet over the sink never closed right and the water ran brown sometimes and the radiator was a finicky little bastard, but it was ours. We cooked dinner together, and we danced to records together, and we went out on dates that weren’t actually dates because it was illegal, and you always sat in corners with your little sketchbook and you drew me more portraits than I ever knew I wanted. And now we… We fight _aliens,_ and we sleep on dirty floors between missions, and we lose each other. Over and over again. Don’t you just ever fucking miss when things were easier? Before you were, I don’t know, _Captain America,_ and before I was brainwashed into forgetting who you even are?” He looks over at Steve, makes eye contact. “Don’t you think it’s fucked up that you’re probably just happy I even remember that much?”

Steve opens his mouth and closes it a few times, like he doesn’t know what to say. Bucky gets that. He lets Steve fish mouth as he scrambles for the right thing to say, because Bucky isn’t in any rush. It’s their first day off in a long time, and they won’t have another day _on_ for a while, save any unexpected emergencies. They’ve got nothing but time. 

It’s weird to acknowledge that fact when they’ve been so used to making every single minute count. It’s weird to have the luxury of time. 

“Of course I miss our old lives,” Steve says eventually. “All the time. I feel out of place here, you know? The culture, the media, the lifestyle… I never wanted any of this. All I ever wanted was to join the Army.” 

For some reason, that statement hits Bucky like a ton of bricks. 

_All I ever wanted was to join the Army._

He remembers all the false enlistments, all the arguments they had about how Steve was dumb to enlist and how the Army would be even dumber to take him, and he remembers that night before he went to England, just how dejected Steve looked when he failed to enlist yet again. 

Like Bucky said before, he’s selfish. Because he never really considered all the things Steve lost, too. His parents, his life, his best friend, his home, his autonomy, his fucking decade. Bucky never really thought about how, when he fell from that train, Steve was there to see it. 

Steve continues, “When I crashed that plane into the ice, I didn’t know that I was going to survive and then wake up in 2011. I thought I was going to die. I was ready to die.” He shrugs a little bit, and then breaks eye contact with Bucky. He watches as Steve starts to fiddle with his fingers, like he’s nervous. “I’d just lost you, and Peggy told me to… Use my grief as motivation. So I did. I was ready to die with you, Buck. And then I didn’t. And the next time I saw you, you were trying to kill me. So, yeah, sometimes I miss the ‘30s and ‘40s, and I miss the way things used to be. But mostly I’m just grateful that, even after everything, you and I are sitting here next to each other, still alive even though we’re both in our 100s.” He chuckles at that last part, nudging his shoulder into Bucky’s, and Bucky allows himself a smile. 

Steve makes a good point, of course he does. Bucky can agree that he never thought they’d be together in 2024–at least, not alive. He always hoped him and Steve would be together forever, he just figured that by 2024, it would be in the form of two burial plots next to each other, and not as two super-soldiers sharing a swanky apartment in Brooklyn. 

He’s not quite sure which is better. 

Bucky leans into Steve’s side, and lets Steve drape his arm around his shoulders. He can feel all of Steve’s rock-hard muscle, and he’s used to it now, but that doesn’t stop him from remembering how it used to feel when Steve would give into being small and just let Bucky hold him. That was usually only in the winter when it was too cold for Steve to handle, so they’d cuddle for warmth. Bucky thinks Steve secretly looked forward to being the little spoon just as much as Bucky did. 

“Do you think maybe this is about something else?” Steve asks quietly. Bucky feels himself begin to stiffen, feels the defense start going up, and he forces himself to swallow it down. “I think it might be less about me, and more about you. I looked like this in the ‘40s, and you saw it and you were okay with it. Didn’t like the attention Peggy was giving me, maybe, but that was just fair payback for the girls you used to lead on.”

Steve’s teasing, but it still makes Bucky sad. 

“You know I never had eyes for any of them. You’ve always been my best guy.”

Steve nods, “I know. You, too.” A small kiss to the crown of Bucky’s head, and then an even smaller sigh. “But I think you’re projecting a little. I think that maybe you miss _you_ from the ‘30s and ‘40s, now that you’re getting all your memories back, and you don’t know how to handle that. So you’re telling yourself that you miss me, because it’s easier that way. You can rationalize it better, and work through it better. But you can’t just keep mourning the old Steve Rogers and expect it to make you stop missing the old Bucky Barnes.”

Bucky wants to lash out. He wants to tell Steve that that’s not true, that he made his peace with his unfortunate fate a while ago, that he mourned the 1940s Bucky Barnes a long time ago. He wants to say that _that_ Bucky Barnes died with the train. But he doesn’t. Because he knows Steve’s right, as much as he hates to admit it. 

The more memories he gets back, the more he realizes how fucked up his life has been. He realizes how, if he hadn’t enlisted in the fucking Army, he could’ve stayed by Steve’s side through the war, and Lord willing Steve could’ve made it long enough to see the decriminilization of homosexuality, and maybe they could’ve made it to 2004, and they could’ve been two 80 year old bastards going to Massachusetts to get legally married. 

(They never needed that piece of paper at the time, but it never stopped Bucky from wanting it.)

But things didn’t turn out that way. He lost his life at 27 years old and everything since then has been someone else entirely. The Winter Soldier was his own persona, someone Bucky hates that he recognizes. And now, the new Bucky Barnes, the war veteran, ex-assassin amputee with PTSD. Bucky thinks he’d recognize The Winter Soldier more than he’d recognize his 27 year old self, and that’s fucking terrifying. 

He bites down on his lip, hard. “This isn’t the life I wanted for us, Stevie.”

“I know that, Buck. It isn’t the life that I wanted, either. But it’s the life we got, and I think we’re pretty goddamn lucky, all things considered.”

Bucky thinks about that, and decides Steve’s right about that, too. 

He glances his shoulder, back at the picture of Steve laughing. He’s always thought Steve was beautiful, but especially like that. Not skinny and small and sick, no. Happy. Steve’s always at his most beautiful when he’s happy. And Bucky thinks this past year is the happiest he’s ever seen Steve, and that counts for something. That counts for everything. 

Bucky will catch up, one day. He’ll keep going to therapy and he’ll keep working on this new Bucky Barnes, and he’ll be happy with himself. He’s beyond happy with Steve, but he needs to be happy with himself, too. And maybe that starts with grieving the Bucky Barnes he lost all those years ago. 

“I miss him, too,” Steve says, and Bucky realizes that Steve is looking at the picture too. “I always thought that was the life we’d have. You’d come home from war, and I’d be your little housewife, making you gold nugget cake and smashing bananas in your face when you came home from work. I miss that Steve.”

“We can still have that life,” Bucky says, and Steve hums. “But maybe without the gold nugget cake. I never really liked it, anyway.”

Steve lets out a surprised laugh, and Bucky finds himself chuckling along. Steve pulls him in closer and Bucky goes, wrapping his arms around Steve’s middle until they’re hugging properly, faces tucked into each other’s neck. 

“For what it’s worth,” Steve whispers, “this Bucky is my favorite.”

Bucky wants to laugh. He wants to call Steve a liar. He wants to ask why. He wants to insist that that can’t be true, that Steve’s biased because they’re able to be public with their relationship now, and because they’re under an illusion of peace. But he doesn’t say any of that stuff. Instead, he just makes a promise to work on making this Bucky his favorite, too. 

In the meantime, he holds Steve tighter, and remembers that the heart beating in Steve’s chest is the exact same heart he fell asleep listening to in 1940. 


End file.
